As midsummer flower, Good Cassander; Steadfast of thought, So courteous, so kind, Or hawk of the tower. EARL OF SURREY. HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY, was the grandson of the Duke of Norfolk who, for his services in the battle of Flodden, regained the title of Duke, lost by his father at Bosworth, where 'Dickon, his master, was bought and sold.' Great obscurity hangs over the personal history of the accomplished Surrey, and the few known facts have been blended with a mass of fable. He was born about the year 1517; in 1526 was made cup-bearer to the king; in 1532 accompanied Henry on his famous visit to Boulogne; and the same year was contracted in marriage to Lady Francis Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford. On account of the youth of Surrey, the marriage, however, did not take place till 1535. In March 1536 his son Thomas was born. In 1512 he accompanied his father, commander of the English forces, to Scotland, and assisted in the campaign which devastated the Scottish Borders. Surrey was present at the burning of Kelso. In the ubsequent war with France, Surrey was again distinguished; but the army he commanded was overpowered by numbers near St. Etienne in January 1545-6, and shortly aftewards he was virtually recalled. The enmity of Lord Hertford is supposed to have aggravated the royal displeasure towards Surrey. In December 1546 he was committed to the Tower; he was tried on 13th January 1545-6, and executed on the 21st. Henry VIII. died a week afterwards, on the 28th. The charge against Surrey was that he had assumed the royal arms-the arms of Edward the Confessor. When he did so Henry was on his deathbed, and the assumption was part of a scheme to claim the regency for the Howards instead of the Seymours. The poems of this chivalrous and unfortunate nobleman were not printed until ten years after his death. They were pub lished in a volume entitled Tottel's Miscellany,' 1557, the first collection of English poetry by different writers, and which ran through six editions in seven years. The love-strains of Surrey, addressed to some unknown Geraldine, were adopted by Nash, the well-known dramatic poet and miscellaneous writer, as the basis of a series of romantic fictions, in which the noble poet was represented as travelling in Italy, proclaiming the beauty of his Geraldine, and defending her matchless charms in tilt and tournament. At the court of the emperor, Surrey was said to have met with the famous magician, Cornelius Agrippa, who shewed him, in a necromantic mirror, his Geral dine languishing on a couch reading one of his sonnets! The whole of this knightly legend was a fabrication by Nash, but it long held possession of the popular mind. All that is known of the poet's Geraldine is contained in this sonnet: From Tuscane came my lady's worthy race; Fair Florence was sometime their ancient seat; The description is here so minute and specific, that, if actually Prisoner in Windsor, he recounteth his Pleasure there passed. 1 Hover, loiter. So cruel prison how could betide, alas! As proud Windsor? where I, in lust and joy, Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour! The large green courts where we were wont to hove, (1) And easy sighs such as folk draw in love. The stately seats, the ladies bright of hue ; The dances short, long tales of great delight, Of foaming horse, (2) with swords and friendly hearts; His 2 A lover tied the sleeve of his mistress on the head of his horse. With silver drops the mead yet spread for ruth, With reins availed (1) and swift ybreathed horse; The wide vales, eke, that harboured us each night, O place of bliss! renewer of my woes, Give me accounts, where is my noble fere; (2) Echo, alas that doth my sorrow rue, Returns thereto a hollow sound of plaint. "And with remembrance of the greater grief How no Age is content with his Own Estate, and how the Age of Chil dren is the happiest, if they had skill to understand it. Laid in my quiet bed, In study as it were, I saw within my troubled head A heap of thoughts appear. And every thought did shew So lively in mine eyes, That now I sighed, and then I smiled, I saw the little boy, In thought how oft that he Did wish of God, to scape the rod, 1 Reins dropped. The young man eke that feels The rich old man that sees His end draw on so sore, Whereat full oft I smiled, To see how all these three, 2 Companion. 3 Agreeable. And musing thus, I think, That man from wealth, to live in woe, Thus thoughtful as I lay, I saw my withered skin, How it doth shew my dented thews, And eke my toothless chaps, "The white and hoarish hairs, That shew, i The messengers of age, 'Bids thee lay hand, and feel 'Hang up, therefore, the bit Whereat I sighed, and said: And tell them thus for me, The Means to Attain a Happy Life. Martial, the things that do attain The happy lif, be these, I find, The mean diet, no delicate fore; True wisdom joined with simpleness; Where wine the wit may not oppress. Ne wish for Death, ne fear his might. We add a few lines of Surrey's blank verse, from his translation of the Second Book of the Æneid': It was the time when, granted from the gods, (Out of whose eyes there gushed streams of tears), Distained with bloody dust, whose feet were bowl'n (1) Ah me, what one! That Hector h w unlike Which erst returned clad with Achilles' spoils, SIR THOMAS WYATT. In 'Tottel's Miscellany' were also first printed the poems of SIR THOMAS WYATT (1503-1542), a distinguished courtier and man of wit, who was fortunate enough to escape the capricious tyranny of Henry VIII, and who may be said to have died in the king's service. While travelling on a mission to France, and riding fast in the heat of summer, he was attacked with a fever that proved mortal. Wyatt enter. 1 The participle of the Saxon verb to bolge, which gives the derivation of bulge.— Tyrwhitt's Chaucer. tained a secret passion for Anne Boleyn, whom he has commemorated in his verse. His satires are more spirited than Surrey's, and one of his lighter pieces, his 'Ode to a Lute,' is a fine amatory effusion. He was, however, inferior to his noble friend in general poetical power. The Lover's Lute cannot be blamed, though it sing of his Lady's Unkindness. Blame not my Lute! for he must sound Of this or that as liketh me; For lack of wit the Lute is bound To give such tunes as pleaseth me; My Lute, alas! does not offend, To sing to them that heareth me; My Lute and strings may not deny, But wreak thyself some other way; Spite asketh spite, and changing change, Blame but thyself that hast misdone, And then my Lute shall sound that same; But if till then my fingers play, By thy desert their wonted way Blame not my Lute! Farewell! unknown; for though thou break Yet have I found out, for thy sake, And if perchance this silly rhyme |